11/10/2016

American Eclipse, Part 2: Kumbaya This

Here's a story from a rude reader:

"Back in summer 2015, I was at an American Legion event in [a rural area in the Northeast]. After the event a few of the guys and I went to a local bar to have a couple beers. As the hours drifted past, the guys slowly left, and I was left alone at the bar.

"Being a quiet weeknight, I started chatting up the bartender. She was a 40-something white woman in jeans, work boots, and a flannel shirt, typical of the area, which is mostly agricultural. Eventually the conversation turned towards family, and she told me about her 20-something daughter, who worked part time at a nail salon.

"A few weeks prior, her daughter collapsed unconscious in her home. She found her daughter on the floor and called 911. They rushed her off to the ER, couldn't figure out was wrong initially, and started running tests. After a couple days in and out of various clinics and numerous tests, they found some sort of issue in her brain and operated. The mother was foggy on the exact details, but absolutely certain that her daughter nearly died and was saved by the operation.

"The next part is what blew me away. She said, 'Now, don't get me wrong, I hate that Obama, and if he were here in this bar right now, I'd shoot him right in his head.' She literally was pointing between her eyes as she said it. She continued, 'But that Obamacare, my daughter got Medicaid because of it. We can't afford health insurance and I don't know how we would have paid for that surgery without it. Obamacare saved my daughter's life.' She then went on some more about how she hated Obama. I was dumbstruck, paid my bill, and drove the fuck home."

How furious do you feel after reading that? How many of you have heard similar stories? I'm gonna bet a fuckload. And I'm gonna bet a fuckload of people who got insurance through the Affordable Care Act, either through the exchanges or through the Medicaid expansion, voted for Donald Trump and Republicans, who have vowed to make repealing the law one of their first tasks.

And when they lose their health insurance, when they get sick, and when they die and when their children die, I will laugh at them.

Does that seem harsh? I mean, I know, I know, we're all supposed to pretend the ugly months that preceded Tuesday never happened. I wish Hillary Clinton had walked up to the microphone yesterday and said, "Burn shit down. Burn down everything the misogynists built. Bring the country to its filthy knees." But, alas, both she and President Obama went with the conciliatory, healing approach, as if somehow those who have broken the country want it to heal. They don't. They want it to scar.

But, no, no, "Stop Shaming Trump Supporters," liberal rabbi Michael Lerner tells us. "The left needs to stop ignoring people’s inner pain and fear. The racism, sexism and xenophobia used by Mr. Trump to advance his candidacy does not reveal an inherent malice in the majority of Americans," he writes. This presupposes that the racism, etc. isn't intrinsic to the fear, that those who have learned and expressed and exulted in hate of others for the crime of not being white and Christian and male are somehow able to be convinced by telling them we understand their class anxiety and poverty. God, how that would be amazing. It would be even more amazing if the left hadn't just been told to take the health insurance we just got most of them and go fuck ourselves with it. And you know what sucks about being a liberal? When we get a chance, we'll be right back at it, trying to make sure these same short-sighted twat fleas can have access to medical care.

This conflagration of anger at the coalition of dumb fucks, assholes, and shitheads who voted for Trump is going to take a long time to calm down to the usual dull roar of blind rage at the fuckery of the ignorant. The idiot hordes have overrun the joint, like barbarians have ever since they evolved enough to wield clubs. Shit, most Trump voters don't have an idea of what the fuck he's gonna do, which makes them that much more pathetic.

As for Donald Trump, listen, motherfucker, it's gonna be time soon to put the fuck up or shut the fuck up, not that you'd ever shut the fuck up. And not just on the cruel and worthless things that your idiot hordes cheered you on about, like your impossible wall and your ludicrous immigration policies. No, bitch, you said you were gonna "knock the hell out of ISIS." You fuckin' better do that without dragging us into another war 'cause that's the way you said it would go down. ISIS is gleeful right now, expecting you to stumblefuck into the greatest recruitment tool since promises of sex slaves.

And you got a shit-ton of construction to do that doesn't involve a border wall. You've proposed huge infrastructure spending, saying yesterday, "We are going to fix our inner cities, and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.” But, obviously, you'll do it only in the most half-assed, bullshit, guaranteed to fail way possible because, you know, that's you, man, wasting other people's money so your tiny hands are clean and you can call yourself a winner while blaming everyone else. And let's not even get into the fact that if a Democrat had proposed a massive infrastructure plan, it would have been endlessly shit on. (To be fair, Mitch McConnell is already shitting on Trump's idea; the petulant yips of Paul "Little Bitch" Ryan can be heard in the distance.)

No, I'm not playing nice. I'm not gonna fuckin' pretend, as the country falls apart, as attacks on Muslims and others increase, as the world distances itself from us, that there was something wrong with me, that I didn't understand Trump voters' concerns, that I didn't try to elect people whose policies attempted to make their lives better. I get it. They don't.